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A gentle hand scooped her up from the bed, pulling her toward wakefulness. Mmph. She opened her eyes, but the bedroom was only dimly lit by a nightlight. She might have panicked about a kidnapping except the arms that held her were familiar and the mind humming along at breakneck speed even more so. Swept up in the tide, she really only caught the tail end of his mental to-do list and realized her Papa had to leave earlier than expected for his newest mission.
Anya buried her face into his shoulder and mumbled, “Papa’s thinking too much.”
“Sorry, peanut.” He eased her onto her feet and helped her get dressed. “I’ve got a lot to do today, so Franky will be watching you until I get back, alright?”
“M’kay. . .”
Papa led her to the kitchen where a hot breakfast awaited her. The smell banished her sleepiness completely and she clambered into the seat to scarf it down. Papa’s food really was the best.
Speaking of. She turned to stare at him. “Papa needs to eat, too.”
He opened his mouth to lie and say he already had, but nothing came out except a long sigh. “No getting anything past you, huh.” He smiled slightly, but that only made the dark circles under his eyes more noticeable. Still, he heated up some of their dinner’s left-overs and ate it quickly.
“Papa’s boss lady is mean.”
“She’s not mean,” he corrected, “she’s exacting and has high expectations of me. It’s my own fault for disregarding orders in the first place.” Not that I regret that, though. What’s done is done, anyway.
Anya fidgeted with her fork a little. “Is it Anya’s fault?”
“Never.” On that word, his internal voice matched exactly what he said and her shoulders loosened a bit. “And Handler understands that, no matter what she has to do about the situation. It’ll settle down soon enough, so don’t worry, alright?”
“Okay!”
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A third person screamed outside her room, but the sound died as quickly as it started, swallowed up by an echoing clap of thunder just like all the rest. Anya jumped out of the cot, pulling Mr. Chimera and the blanket down with her, so she could shuffle underneath it to hide from whatever was happening. She held very still as the door’s lock clicked open and someone eased into the room.
She recognized the man’s inner voice. It was the liar, who had been pretending to be one of the doctors who usually forced Anya to study. He was a liar, but his inner voice was not scary like the doctors’ (any of them, really, but especially the one the liar was pretending to be), so Anya peeked her eyes out from under the blanket to watch his shoes come closer.
Shit, she’s terrified. Of course. These walls aren’t sound proof. He knelt down a little ways away from the cot. “Hey,” he said, finally using his real voice. “I’m sorry for all the scary noises. I’m not here to hurt you, kiddo. I’ll get you somewhere safe.” Away from these monsters.
Anya shuffled a little closer to look up at his face. His face was different and he had brown hair instead of the grey wig, but he still wore the white coat, complete with splashes of red on the edges and some more spots on the arms. And yet, she still remembered what his first thought had been, back when he’d first seen her the day he started pretending to be the scary doctor. The liar wasn’t scary.
She reached up a hand, slowly.
He reached back, just as slowly, careful not to spook her. When their hands met, he closed his around hers more gently than even Mama had. So she wiggled forward until he could pick her up. “You’ve been very brave through all of this, Anya. Let’s get you out of here.”
The liar took her, the blanket, and Mr. Chimera out of the room where she’d spent most of her life, hiding her face from what was outside even as his mind filled with a storm, mostly of things she didn’t understand. She should have been scared by that, would have been with anyone else, but his arms were secure around her and none of the roiling waters in his mind was directed at her.
The only thought he directed toward her was a silent promise: No one will ever hurt her this way again.
So Anya closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat thundering beside her until it drowned out the noise in his mind.
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Scruffy opened his door with a grin, allowing her to scurry inside while he and Papa talked a bit. She set down her bag of toys and then ran back to get one last goodbye hug from Papa. She could hear Scruffy snickering in the safety of his mind about how she had ‘the great Twilight wrapped around her finger,’ whatever that meant. Still, true to Papa’s word back when she’d found out Scruffy knew her secret, Scruffy was a good guy and none of his pranks were ever really mean.
Papa ruffled her hair a bit, promising to be back before she had to go to bed, and left. It had gotten easier over the last few months to watch him leave, because he always came back. He kept his promise to never send her back to the orphanage, to never abandon her, and even Scruffy’s mind had confirmed it wasn’t a lie.
So, she turned to Scruffy with a smile and announced, “Anya has to make a card for Papa today!”
“Oho? What for?”
“Ms. Yuna said it’s Father’s Day tomorrow and that Anya should make Papa a card.” She’d made one of those once before, for the first family that adopted her. That first mama told her to and showed her how, but she hadn’t really liked that papa much. He hadn’t been mean, but he hadn’t liked her the way that mama had. Her new Papa was different. He’d saved her and he came back for her when the second family returned her. “It has to be special.”
Scruffy nodded, pinching his chin with his fingers. “I see. I’m not the best with cards, but I’ll help however I can.”
Com-plee-ance thus acquired, she dashed back over to the bag she’d brought. Ms. Yuna had given her the supplies and even helped her start on the card itself, so all she really needed Scruffy for was the letter part. Anya knew her letters and her handwriting had started becoming more leg-able, but that didn’t mean she knew what to write.
“Papa is really tired and stressed because of his missions.” She looked up at Scruffy and squinted. “Scruffy’s been Papa’s friend a long, long time. What should Anya say to make him feel better?”
Scruffy considered it, running through options with her. Some of them were dumb, or too little to really do what she wanted this card to do, but then he asked, “You want to make him feel better, right? Can’t you just write a thank you that talks about the things he does that are good?”
“But we can’t leave evidence.”
“Hmm. Good point.” Then his eyes lit up and he snapped his fingers. She didn’t even have time to read his mind before the answer came spilling out. “He taught you a bunch of ciphers! Maybe try one of those, so you can actually tell him what you want to say while not leaving anything suspicious for other people to find?”
“Scruffy’s a genius!”
Scruffy had her write out the actual contents first, so they could decide which cipher would work best to still make a normal sounding Father’s Day card. It took some trial and error, even though Scruffy was really good with the ciphers she’d learned, but they did get it done.
Only then, when the completed card was carefully sealed into an envelope and set into a protected compartment of her bag did they return to their game of ‘Tower Defense,’ wherein Agent Blossom had to rescue Agent Chimera from the clutches of the evil Dr. Grunkle.
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Twilight returned to Franky’s apartment exactly on time and exactly as tired as he could be without passing out. Franky let him in without comment, thankfully, and handed over a sleepy Anya and a toy bag freshly repacked after a long day of play.
“Thank you, Franky,” he said, as he handed over the cash.
“No problem, man. Any idea when the Fullmetal Lady’s going to let up?”
Twilight sighed. “She’s not the problem. It’s the higher ups who wanted to prove a point. Handler told me today was the last of it.”
“Good. Get some sleep.”
With a nod, he set off to return to their home. Anya fell asleep halfway there, but that was to be expected. Glancing down at her little face, he wondered if Handler didn’t have a point. He’d been honest with Franky in that it wasn’t Handler who was pushing him so hard, but she definitely shared some of the higher ups’ opinions about all this.
She’s a liability and you know that, Twilight, she’d said, staring at him from over her glasses. You’ve been on the front lines all of your life, one way or another. You know better than anyone how thin that thread actually is and you’re dragging a kid into the deep end with you.
I know, damn it, but she is everything I’ve been fighting for my whole life and I won’t break my promise to her. I can’t. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not sorry for this.
She’d hit the nail on the head, really. He knew it was a risk, to him and to Anya. He knew what happened to the families of spies who worked in the circles he did. In the moment, he had perhaps spoken too honestly, faced with that too astute accusation, but he stood by what he’d told Anya that morning. Because while he wished more than anything that she could have had a better life, a more stable childhood, no one else had stepped up, so he had to do it.
The apartment was undisturbed, nothing out of place, so he took a moment to breathe, leaning against the door. He had the day off tomorrow, which he’d probably spend running around after Anya, but that was fine. Pushing off from the door, he carried her into her room and tucked her in, setting the toy bag down by her dresser. He smoothed down her hair one last time before he turned to head to his own bed. He’d fight tooth and nail to stay alive for her sake if he had to.
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Not for the first time, Twilight woke from the deepest sleep of his life to his daughter sprawled across his chest like some kind of tiny paralysis demon. He still wasn’t sure why his brain had decided this was safe in spite of his training, but the fact of the matter was that the only threat Anya posed to him was to his sanity so he didn’t really care.
He carefully extricated himself to go start on breakfast. Anya merely rolled over and grabbed a hold of the blankets like she usually would with Mr. Chimera.
Smiling and shaking his head, he padded into the kitchen but stopped short when he spotted a colorful array of cardstock cut into stars and glued to a blue card sitting on the table. Intrigued, he picked it up. Happy Father’s Day, read the front, in Anya’s shaky but determined hand.
Was. . . was that why Handler had insisted on him getting the day off? He looked at the calendar on the wall. It was indeed Father’s Day. Huh.
He opened the card and had to stare. The written words were standard for what one would expect but something about it. . . ah. A smile stretched across his face unbidden. She’d used one of the more difficult ciphers he’d taught her, the one that was actually something he’d made for her.
It didn’t take long to decode it, but it took him significantly longer to get his breath back after he had.
Dear Papa.
Being Papa’s daughter is the best thing ever. Papa saved me from the lab and came back for Anya when the other families didn’t want me. You still keep me even when your boss lady is mad at you. Best of all, Papa loves Anya even if Anya is weird and creepy. Thank you, Papa. Anya loves you too.
Happy Father’s Day.
Love, Peanut
Twilight set the card down on the table, leaning on his hands to keep himself steady. Of all the things to be caught off guard by, it had to be this. She was always so full of surprises.
He straightened up and set the card against the fridge, pinning it in place with a magnet. There it stayed, through that day and all those after, until duty called them to a new apartment and it found a new home tucked into Loid Forger’s desk. It would be the first of many Father’s Day cards, encrypted with a code known only to them (and one Franky Franklin).